The world’s biggest tech companies have devoted huge resources to voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa. Yet despite a user base numbering in the millions, these apps have serious flaws as researchers at Zhejiang University, China, recently showed.

DANIEL KISH SEES more than you might expect, for a blind man. Like many individuals deprived of sight, he relies on his non-visual senses to navigate the world. But people tend to find Kish’s abilities rather remarkable.

Researchers have crafted algorithms that can blend an audio recording of someone talking with a video of them saying something else – and create a new convincing lip-synched video with the replacement sound.

EARLIER this year Françoise Hardy was asked in a YouTube video why President Donald Trump sent his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to lie about the size of the inauguration crowd. First, Ms Hardy argues.

Hacking sensors isn’t as big an area of research as hacking operating systems and firmware, but the results of simple physical hacks can be far-reaching.

In a talk at Enigma 2017 Yongdae Kim, professor in the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s Graduate School of Information Security, showed how active and passive sensors can be hacked by simple laser pointer or speakers set on just the right frequency.